Saturday, 14 December 2013

It must
be a sign of middle age and relative security that I find the hardest question for
me to be asked lately is “what do you want for Christmas?”. It is also a sign
of getting older that my honest answer to “what do you want for Christmas?” is
“sleep”.

So this
third Sunday in Advent is a gift for me… and anyone else who is feeling just a
little bit harassed.

Here is Isaiah’s gift to us,
from chapter 35:

Strength for the weak hands,

Firmness for the feeble
knees.

The Lord says to those who
are of a fearful heart,

"Be strong, do not
fear!

Here is
your God.

The
greatest gift of Christmas is God’s presence in our world and in our lives. And
it is a gift that we receive without even lifting a finger. More than that, it
is a gift which promises us new strength, new grace, new and deeper reserves of
love and joy and peace. Or as Isaiah puts it: “everlasting joy shall be upon
their heads;

they shall obtain joy and
gladness,

and
sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

Meanwhile
the gift from the letter of James are the words telling us to be patient and to
strengthen our hearts. At first this might seem like advice for the young at
heart, who cannot wait for Christmas to come. Do you remember those days – when
you impatiently counted down the sleeps before Christmas, feeling like it would
never come? Now I expect you’re more likely to be caught saying ‘I can’t
believe it’s only 10 days to Christmas – I’ll never be ready’.

For those
who feel like they can’t wait, James says ‘be patient’.. and for those who feel
hassled by all they have to do. James says ‘be patient’. God will come in
Jesus. Nothing you do will make it happen sooner or be better. The gift of
Christ is God’s idea – and God will make it happen, not any human plan.

I chose
the carol, ‘O little town of Bethlehem’ for this service because I think it
expresses perfectly this sense that the birth of Jesus Christ is an act of God,
not a human event.

Bethlehem
is asleep – every living soul. The hymn is full of references to all the things
that human beings are not doing,
while all the action is done by God, the angels, even the stars in the sky. We are
left only to wonder and to sing of Immanuel - God come to us, abiding with us,
entering our hearts. Be patient.

But I
don’t believe that God means us to be complacent as we wait for the gift of
love at Christmas. Isaiah and the other prophets speak about the coming of
God’s kingdom when there will be peace and joy and love for all As we wait for
God’s full purpose to be revealed we might find ourselves becoming restless,
impatient. If Jesus came to be prince of peace, when will there be peace in
Jerusalem, in Syria, in Afghanistan?

So we come to the gift of
our gospel reading. I’d forgive you for wondering why we have had a reading not
about the birth of Jesus, but from 30 years on, when Jesus has started his work
and preaching. John the Baptist has baptised Jesus and then John has been put
in prison for his condemnation of his ruler, Herod. John is beginning to wonder
whether Jesus is the Messiah after all. He sends his disciples to ask “Are you
the one, or must we look for another?”.

Jesus tells him to look at
the evidence “the blind recover their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are made
clean, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, the poor are brought good
news”. If Jesus was a modern day teenager he would simply say to John ‘Am I the
one? Like, duh!’.

Who else but the Messiah
could do those things?

When all these good things
happen, you know God is at work in his world. John knew it when he saw Jesus at
work – but where might today’s world know it?

I want to give all of us a
challenge today.

You know it’s Christmas
because of the evidence all around you. But right at the heart of Christmas is
this message that God came into the world in Jesus.

John the Baptist was
challenged by Jesus to look for the signs around him and I believe we are each
challenged to look for the evidence around us.

Look for goodness and new
life, hope and joy in he world – and when you find them, look for the presence
of God in them. You might hear in the Christmas story about Jesus Christ - who
was the word made flesh 2000 years ago. But you might wonder how people can see
& hear that for themselves, as John did? It is a challenge, sometimes, to
see evidence of God’s gift of Gods presence to us – even in our 21st
century world. How can the world of today see the human face of the one who is
God with us? That can be a challenge.

But to those of us who
follow Jesus Christ, it is even more challenging than that.

People need to see the face
of Christ today in us – that’s why
the church is sometimes called the body of Christ.

If Christmas is God’s gift
to us of God’s own self, it is a gift which comes with an invitation and a
challenge to be part of God’s gift to the world around us.

So if today you can accept
the gift of Isaiah’s words, and the letter of James’ words, and the gift of John
the Baptist’s experience of God in action, the be ready too to accept the challenge
this gift brings.

Listen to the story the
church tells; look at the love in the lives of the people who are part of the
church; and think about what your part is going to be in showing the love of
Jesus in the world.

Look for the evidence of God’s
gift to the world – and then be prepared to be that evidence for the whole world.

And may God help
each one of us to live up to that challenge – in Jesus name. Amen.

Friday, 29 November 2013

For the Dr Who fans it has been an exciting few weeks.
Last Saturday was the 50th anniversary of the first episode of Dr
Who. Of the more recent Dr Whos, I have liked David Tennant best: and it was
Tennant’s Dr Who who came up with this description of time “People assume that
time goes in a straight line, but actually it’s like a big ball of wibbly
wobbly timey wimey..stuff."

Ok – you may not care about Dr Who at all – but as it’s
Advent Sunday you’re forced to think about time.

We might have been told that Advent Sunday is about
getting ready for Christmas: but if that’s all it is, why aren’t our readings a
bit more Christmassy? If we are getting ready to celebrate the coming of Christ
in a historical event from 2000 years ago – why are our readings looking not
back, but forward?

On Advent Sunday we think about the coming of our God into
the world in Jesus. And that means we think about time, because we simultaneously
celebrate a past event – when Jesus came, a present event, that Jesus is here,
and a future event, when Jesus will come.

We hear from Isaiah of a time when God’s place, God’s
mountain, will be the highest and greatest in the world – when all people will
be drawn to God and when there will be absolute peace – when swords will be
hammered into ploughshares.

This was a wonderful promise for the people of God of
the first Isaiah’s time:the kingdom of Israel has been split into two and both
the kingdom of Israel, in the north and the kingdom of Judah, in the south were
facing threats from neighbouring kingdoms. War was a fact of life for the
people to whom Isaiah was prophesying, and they must have longed for the kind
of peace, brought by God, that he promises.

The letter to the Romans looks forward to a time of
salvation for all – when the day – the day of the Lord – will finally come and
all will be light. Although the church at Rome knows they live in a time of
darkness, when God’s light has not yet fully dawned, they are told to be ready,
and told to put on the armour of light, to be children of light and followers
of Christ, even in the darkness that surrounds them.

And Jesus point his followers to the future and warns them
that they do not know when the end of time will come, but that it will come
unexpectedly and suddenly.

Immediately following this teaching, Jesus tells the
parables of the wise & foolish virgins, and of the sheep and the goats –
stories of being ready, and of being judged at the end of time.

Time may or may not be a ball of wobbly wobbly, timey
wimey stuff – but the Bible teaches us that our God is not bound by time. The
God who came in Jesus is the God who will come. God will come; life as we know
it will change forever; there is nothing we can do except wait for God’s time.

But what are we meant to do with that promise?

It might sound a bit like an empty promise – ‘a time of
great peace & salvation’ – you don’t see much sign of that happening
anytime soon, do you? Maybe these prophets got it wrong – maybe God has given
up on his world, after all.

Or maybe these promises make us feel that there really
isn’t anything we can do except to wait, passively, for God to act.

I said that Advent was about God coming to us – so
let’s wait & see what God is going to do.

But of course we are not waiting in a vacuum for God to
act – we are approaching Christmas and remembering that God has come into the
world.

God has come – we don’t need to search or seek or
strive. Advent means God is coming to us – whether we like it or not.

And Jesus Christ came to announce that ‘ the kingdom of
God is among you’ – we may not be able to see a world of perfect peace yet. But
we can live as those who belong to the kingdom, because we know God is here
already, that the reign of God has begun, even if God’s rule is not yet
complete. The God who has come and will come keeps coming, is here – is the God
of yesterday, today and forever.

So as we celebrate this communion meal
today we celebrate the God who is the true Time Lord.

We remember that Christ
died for us – that the risen Christ is with us – and that Christ will come.

And this Advent and this Christmas
reminds us to celebrate the love of God, through all time, that never ends.

Tuesday, 19 November 2013

Last weekend I was in Mevagissey, leading Sunday morning worship. Unfortunately, just an hour before the service I realised that I had left the sermon at home (2 and a half hours' drive away). I managed to collect my thoughts enough to preach - it may even have been better! Anyway, this is what was on my computer, all that time.

Readings: 2
Thessalonians 3: 6-13 Luke 21: 5-19

It is a joy to be with you. Not only because I have
made no secret of the fact that I love to see the sea, as I travel around the
synod, but because this is a very special weekend, with the signing of the
ecumenical covenant for Cornwall this afternoon.

1.“to seek out every possible opportunity for
joint initiatives at local and county level in mission to all the people of
Cornwall

2.to work together to equip both lay and
ordained ministry whenever possible and to share that ministry wherever
appropriate

3.to continue the work of developing
strategies whereby we optimize the use of our church buildings for the benefit
of communities throughout the county”

That sounds like a lot of exciting possibilities ahead,
to me.

Seeking, working, sharing, planning.. together.

But the most exciting part comes at the end of what we,
your church leaders, will sign this afternoon:

‘We also affirm our intention to go on praying and
working, with all our fellow Christians, for the visible unity of the Church in
the way Christ chooses, so that people may be led to love and serve God more
and more.’

Praying and working.
Getting the balance between what we leave to God and what we do ourselves. How
do we get the balance right?

The letter to the Thessalonians gives Paul’s warning to
those who are prepared to wait for God to sort things out and so fritter their
lives and their time away sitting around. ‘Do not be weary in doing what is
right’ says Paul. Sometimes we cannot simply pray and hope for the best – but
have to be prepared to struggle with all the issues to work out what is the
right thing to do; to get on and work!

And in our Gospel reading, we are caught between
realism & hope.

This is a relentlessly difficult reading. Jesus says to
his followers quite clearly – don’t get carried away by the splendour of the
temple – the fine stones and ornaments. Don’t put your trust in your fine
building – because it won’t last. In fact, the Temple was destroyed by the
Roman army about 40 years later – the temple will be destroyed. The Jewish
people will need to reshape their faith without a temple – relying only on
their local synagogues as places where they can study and pray and hope for the
future. Someone suggested to me last week that the synagogues replacing the
temple as the focus for worship was rather like our present-day churches
finding new ways to work – a kind of “Fresh Expressions” movement for the 1st
century AD.

Jesus warns his followers that there will be change,
that they can’t expect things to stay the same.

So if we can’t put our trust in buildings, in solid
bricks & mortar, what can we trust? People? Jesus says “Take care you are
not misled. For many will come saying ‘ I am he’ and ‘the time has come’. Do
not follow them”.

So however charismatic a leader, or whatever the claim
they make for themselves, we mustn’t put our trust in other people, either.

No, Jesus says, when you’re really up against it, when
you’re seized and persecuted and made to stand up in court to defend yourselves
“I myself will give you such words and wisdom as no opponent can resist or
refute”. God’s Spirit, given by Jesus, will be what saves us when we face the
ultimate test.

We can’t and we shouldn’t trust buildings or people:
but we can trust God – the power of God the Father, given by the Son through
the Spirit: God is what we can always rely on.

That doesn’t let us off the hard wrestling of ‘what are
we to do?’ – it doesn’t mean that we can sit back & hope God will sort it
out. God’s spirit, the power of God, will come to help those who follow Jesus –
but only when they are really up against it – arrested, imprisoned, and put in
trial. Yet in the midst of that trial God will strengthen them and give them
the right words to say.

As we stand at the brink of the new possibilities of
this ecumenical covenant, perhaps we can look again at the challenge Jesus
gives.

What does it mean to sign a covenant together to
promise to seek, work, share and plan together? How can we be open to the work
of the Spirit in the way we pray and work together for the sake of the world
around us? How can we allow God’s Spirit to change us, so that we can be agents
of reconciliation and unity in a world which longs for both?

Wednesday, 13 November 2013

So here we are at the start of
something. The start of a new ministry. This is the start of a relationship
between Gary & this United Area, and especially between Gary & the
churches at Market Lavington, and Devizes . It is also the start of Gary’s
relationship with the South Western synod. One of the great joys of a new start
like this and welcoming any minister in an induction is getting to know him or
her better.

So what do we learn about Gary from
his choice of readings? The gospel readings from Luke and from John were the
ones he chose – the same ones chosen for the baptism of Prince George a few
weeks ago. At first this worried me: are we dealing with delusions of grandeur
here, Gary? Are you introducing yourself to us as the heir to the throne? Maybe
‘Prince Gary’ has a bit of a ring to it?

But my fears were dispelled when I
looked again at the readings.

Jesus talks about a kingdom, it’s
true, but he demonstrates the values of the kingdom of God, not the hierarchies
of our world. In a society where children did not count for much until they
reached adulthood (and where women were second class citizens all their lives),
Jesus offers a new way. The great and powerful are loved by God, but so are the
smallest and the least – the heirs of the kingdom are not those who are
specially high born, but each one is welcomed by God in Jesus as if she or he
was royalty.

I don’t know how many of you saw the
footage of the Pope, in the middle of giving an address to thousands in St
Peter’s Square in the Vatican, being interrupted by a little boy in a yellow
rugby top. The Pope made no attempt to shoo the boy away, but patted him on the
head, chatted to him at one point, and just carried on whilst the boy hugged
his legs. I’m sure the security guards do not operate with the instruction ‘do
not stop them, for the kingdom of God belongs to these little ones too’ – but
it was a great reminder that God’s love is for us all.

Whatever you think of Pope Francis
as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, you cannot fault his humanity and
his grasp of God’s truth that this boy was not an unwelcome intruder but a
welcome guest.

So we welcome Prince Gary, as a
precious child of God and an heir, with us all, to God’s kingdom.

The baptism service for Prince
George was not televised, of course, but we have been offered ‘highlights’ from
the Archbishop of Canterbury’s address, and it seems that Justin Welby focused
on the reading from John. He apparently said that those who take the journey of
baptism must look in 2 directions – to the world, sharing the life of Christ
with all; and to Christ, who says ‘abide in me’.

That’s also pretty good advice for
churches and minister in a new ministry.

Jesus reminds his followers ‘I am
the vine and you are the branches’. No new ministry can bear good fruit if we
forget to remain centred on Jesus Christ. It is the love of Jesus flowing out
through us that drives our mission in the world. It is the love of Jesus
flowing into us that keeps us close to the life and love of God the Father. It
is the love of Jesus that keeps us united together as branches of the one vine
– whatever our differences as church members, churches, denominations, we are
one in Jesus, the true vine.

But if we’re all one in being heirs
to God’s kingdom and we’re all one in Jesus the true vine, is it wrong to
induct Gary here as a leader?

If I say ‘yes’ we’d have to stop the
service right now, wouldn’t we? But of course I’m going to say ‘no, it is not
wrong to induct a new minister to lead you here’.

The Isaiah reading looks to the time
when God’s kingdom will come in all its fullness – a fantastic time when all
normal natural laws will end, when ‘The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie
down with the kid’. God’s kingdom is so unlike the world we know that Isaiah
says ‘a little child shall lead them’.

God is not looking for Princes of the church to lead his people.
Jesus himself refused to use the political or hierarchical power of his day to
fulfill his mission. God’s leader is one who knows they are just a child of
God. Just a precious child of God. Just a chosen, beloved, child of God.
Because every child of God is an heir of the kingdom and a servant of Jesus
Christ. And as long as Gary remembers that that is who he is – it gives him the
authority to lead in the way Isaiah envisions, through the Spirit of the Lord.

So we welcome Gary as one who will help others to hear God’s
word, to know God’s love and to heed God’s spirit. Then together we will be
parts of the true and living vine.

The Archbishop of Canterbury apparently concluded the sermon for Prince
George in this way: 'For life to be complete, the living and trusted love of
Jesus Christ is the foundation. That is something we grow into, live out, hold
onto, and which finally carries us home. With Christ and his love as our
centre, all the needs we meet are faced, all the hopes we have are shaped, and
all the possibilities of our life journey are fulfilled.'

About Me

Presently I am Moderator of the South Western Synod of the United Reformed Church, which means on any given Sunday I can be preaching in a URC from Portscatho & Falmouth in the South & West to Highworth & Swindon in the North & East. From October 2007 to June 2013 I was 'Priest-in-charge' of the Local Ecumenical Partnership of Whittlesford & Pampisford - consisting of 2 Parish Churches & one United Reformed Church (in Whittlesford) plus minister to Duxford URC: that's when I began this blog.